PW banned by SEBI: Nearly a decade later, Satyam employees have moved on from the scam that shook their lives

Tech Mahindra  | For the period of 1-year, 3-year, and, 5-year the share price has gained 20 percent, 82 percent, and  55 percent respectively.

Even as the fallout of the Satyam scam continues to make headlines nearly a decade later, employees of the software firm seem to have moved on to other problems, and were largely unperturbed by the ban on Satyam’s audit firm last week.

On Wednesday, Sebi found Price Waterhouse guilty in the multi-crore Satyam scam, and barred its network entities from issuing audit certificates to any listed company in India for two years.

Employees are not just worried about their future, but also present prospects. “It feels like the crisis never ends- first it was the Satyam scam, then changing and upgrading technologies and now we’re not even sure if we will have a job in spite of making all the right moves,” said another Tech Mahindra employee who joined Satyam in 2007, fresh out of college.

Satyam founder Raju confessed to a Rs 7,136 crore fraud on January 7, 2009, sparking a series of events that led to his prosecution and the company's takeover by Tech Mahindra. In 2015, a Special Court convicted Raju and nine others of criminal conspiracy, cheating, and criminal breach of trust, among other crimes, sentencing him to seven years in jail, with a fine of Rs 5 crore.

“There was disbelief then, all those years ago, and we went through some tough times- job uncertainties, banks refusing to give Satyam employees loans, the incessant hounding by the media- but now we’ve moved on,” said another Pune-based former Satyam employee.

Transition

Tech Mahindra was credited with a smooth transition by most employees and several stuck on for years after the transition. “What happened with PwC, I don’t have much of an opinion on that but what I do care about is holding on to my job and hoping I get a decent appraisal, if at all, this year,” said a Hyderabad- based employee who did not wish to be named.

“How does this impact any of us?” asked a Tech Mahindra employee based in Noida, even as he reminisced about the tough times he and his colleagues went through when the scam came to light in 2008.

In spite of its good financial performance, Tech Mahindra has, in the past year, been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Last June, an audio clip of an HR executive of Tech Mahindra firing an employee was made public, leading to much furore and a call for a more human approach to dealing with layoffs.

Last February, the company also suspended the appraisal cycle for employees with over six years of work experience, pending a management review.

The Indian IT industry is facing multi-pronged challenges as automation takes hold, growth slows, clients tighten their IT budgets and protectionist sentiment in the Indian IT industry’s largest markets causes a re-look at existing business models.

“This (Satyam) was my first job, and I would be happy for this to be my last, except that now we don’t know what constitutes career growth any more,” he smirks.